what does blue sound like and chrome egg yolk yellow or a pink mourning cloud
dark indigo weft maximized to shimmer jars your eyes
an ethereal euphoric emphasis
embodied into extraordinary reverie
Colour. Royal Pavilion Collection, Brighton
images: goldenrod at dawn, Mary Gartside’s Yellow colour blot, Polly Jane Reed’s Spiritual Map, The Holy City and chrome yellow in situ at the brick dwelling
Mt. Greylock Residency Sunday October 13, 2024 dawn to dusk poetry reading 4pm
On Sunday October 13, 2024, Brece Honeycutt will have a skyday artist residency at Bascom Lodge on Mt. Greylock.
Honeycutt continues to be fascinated by clouds and the ever-changing sky. Seconds compounded into minutes often bring quick sky changes. Contrasted with lingering, long lasting blues punctuated with wisps of white clouds. And yet, grey upon yellowgrey upon orangegrey into pinkgrey can be both grim and great, depending.
Whilst on top of Mt. Greylock, she will observe and translate onto paper with words and watercolor the skyday. At 4pm, she will read prose and poetry related to clouds, including poems from her forthcoming chapbook, pink grey blue sky cloud.
Thanks to Monika Sosnowski and Peter Dudek for inviting me to Bascom Lodge for a residency atop Mt. Greylock.
endangered species
recently, a friend reminded me of
a temporary art work I made for
“Clean Out Your Files Week”
materials:
gently used file folders
print shop off-cuts.
items destined for the dumpster
each folder acquired a new label,
a long strand of paper with either —
a bird, crustacea, fish, insect, spider,
mammal, mussel, snail, plant, reptile
.or amphibian—printed on it
endangered species names from
The National Geographic Society
Book, ‘The Company We Keep’
by Douglas H. Chadwick &Joel Sartore, 1995
Commissioned by The Department of
Environmental Services and Arlington
Cultural Affairs, Arlington County, VA.
The 1998 installation was in the lobby
of the Bozman Government Center.
And, when finished, all materials were
either reused or recycled.
Thanks to Angela Adams for inviting me
to be part of Clean Out Your Files Week.
[photos by Jason Horowitz]
is just blue, or azure sky blue?
red or scarlet poppy red?
pink or carnation pink?
In her 1898 book,
“The Use of Color in the Verse of
English Romantic Poets,” Alice Edwards Pratt
delves deep into the poets
“descriptive, discriminative, dramatic, aesthetic”
words of color
such as—
“pinky-silver’
“autumnal leaf like-red”
“purple-hectic”
“rose-ensanquined ivory”
and charts each poet’s color
by terms for--
“mountains and hills”
“sky, cloud and air”
“deep waters”
Happily I found Pratt whilst reading
Nicholas Gaskill’s essay, ‘Language and Psychology’
in the ‘A Cultural History of Color:
In the Age of Industry’
edited by Alexandra Loske.
.
this morning’s poetry prompt
from Heather McKay Young
pick a color & I chose
‘purple.violet.iris.mauve.’
on my morning walk,
I found myself on the purple trail
by happenstance
by coincidence
by necessity
by unknown choice
by poetry
2 years ago today, Copy Press launched
‘A Bird to overhear-‘ for their Becoming Fireflies series!
“Are we listening? Are you listening?
When did I start listening?
When’d di you first hear them? Do you recall which one?
Was it the dawn chorus? Or the wail, cry, caw at last light?
When did it dawn on you? Are you listening?
Can you name them? How many can you name?
According to the New York Times only 1 in 8 can
Name more than 20 species. Can you name their songs?Can you hear them? Can you see their flight patterns?
The landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll, once blind,
could name them by the sound of their wings in flight.”
-text excerpt from 'Listening" chapter | watch ‘A Bird to overhear-‘
I am forever grateful to Copy Press for their faith in my work. Thanks a million, Vit Hopley, Yve Lomax, Jono Lomax and Opel Morgen for this collaboration and all you did to make it happen.
'A Bird to overhear-' photography, filming/Brece Honeycutt; script, narrator/Brece Honeycutt; script editor/Vit Hopley; producer/Yve Lomax; video-editing, post production/Jono Lomax; graphics/Opal Morgen; thumbnail image/Brece Honeycutt
Large swathes of goldenrod grace the fields now and sway in the wind on this late summer day. We natural dyers long for this time of year when we can harvest the brilliant flowers that make an eye popping fluorescent yellow on cloth.
The Shakers dyed with many fall harvests—goldenrod, sumac, walnut—but didn’t wear yellow. Why I wonder didn’t they take advantage of these vast fields of bright flowers? Deborah Burns notes “goldenrod grows in neglected fields” and “where corn had once grown tall, goldenrod now replaced it.” A ‘neglected’ field did not exist on any Shaker farm, so, perhaps, the goldenrod was not as plentiful as it is now. I still search for the reason that Shakers didn’t wear yellow, but maybe it is as easy as yellow shows dirt more than a deep butternut cloth.
If you go to harvest goldenrod, you will not be the only one, for the pollinators are out in full force taking nectar and pollen from the goldenrod, making stores for the winter months.
I invite you to carry Mary Oliver’s fitting poem, Goldenrod, in your pocket as you seek pollinators amongst the fluorescent yellow inflorescences.
On roadsides, in fall fields, in rumpy bunches, Saffron and orange and pale gold,
in little towers, soft as mash, sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers, full of bees and yellow heads and perfect flowerlettes
and orange butterflies. I don’t suppose much notice comes of it, except for honey, and how it heartens the heart with its
blank blaze. I don’t suppose anything loves it except, perhaps, the rocky voids filled by its dumb dazzle.
For myself, I was just passing my, when the wind flared and the blossoms rustled, and the glittering pandemonium
leaned on me. I was just minding my own business when I found myself on their straw hillsides, citron and butter-colored,
and was happy, and why not? Are not the difficult labors of our lives full of dark hours? And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,
that is better than these light-filled bodies? All day on their airy backbones they toss in the wind,
they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,
they rise in a stiff sweetness,
in the pure peace of giving
one’s gold away.
Mary Oliver, Goldenrod fromNew and Selected Poems, 1992
Deborah E. Burns, Shaker Cities of Peace, Love and Union A History of Hancock Bishopric, (University Press of New England, 1993), pg. 190.
This past week, Sarah Margolis-Pineo, Curator at Hancock Shaker Village and I went on a field trip to meet our collaborator at Camphill Village for a tour. It wasn’t the astoundingly beautiful and plentiful herb garden or creative energy found in the neat stacks of bound books and elaborate calligraphy that took my breath away (and believe me they did), but the three essentials that Camphill is founded on.
Three Essentials
1—Recognition that in every human being lives an eternal healthy spirit no matter the disability.
2—Every human being has the right and responsibility to learn and develop.
The Dandelion's pallid Tube Astonishes the Grass - And Winter instantly becomes An infinite Alas –
The tube uplifts a signal Bud And then a shouting Flower -- The Proclamation of the Suns That sepulture is o'er -
Emily Dickinson, 1881
What if the dandelion heralded the same respect as the tulip or dahlia, commanded high prices, and could only be purchased at select nurseries? Would it be more highly regarded if it cost more, rather than arrived on lawns and byways for free? Every year, I am astonished by the number of people that vehemently detest the dandelion and seek to eradicate it by any means necessary.
Our lawn, shall we say, is ‘littered with” dandelions, plantain, violets of all types, and clover, just to name a few. Yet when we moved here 11 years ago, the lawn was a wasteland of pure grass, with nature’s bounty obliterated by the indiscriminate use of herbicides and pesticides. Slowly, we have cultivated a variegated spring crop of wildflowers and now watch the bees and other pollinators relish in them. We take cues from the bees, and happily gather the plants, adding them into our diet, since all four of the plants identified above are edible and provide nourishment.
One should not partake of dandelion wine or greens, make an infusion with the dainty violet flowers, add young plantain leaves to your spring salad or munch a ripe pink clover from the field, if herbicides or pesticides have been applied.
“Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.”
If one has any doubt about the effects of man and his man-made chemicals on the natural world, the New York Times recently published an analysis of a study done by the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; www.ipbes.net) that brings clear evidence to our dire situation:
Thoreau noted in his journal on May 9, 1858, “A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself.” Why not, for the good of the globe, let those dandelions grow, feeding the pollinators and yourself, let it go to seed and then rejoice in what grows naturally around you?
——————————————————————————-
Emily Dicksinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), pgs. 577-78.
